Will Self's Blog, page 21

Madness of crowds: A modest proposal for housing the Calais migrants

A friend of a friend comes by to pick up some fags I’ve obtained for him – Gauloises filters. Global markets being what they are, you can buy cocaine (DOC Colombia) and heroin (DOC Afghanistan) on the street corners of almost any British city, but when it comes to child-murdering nicotine, certain varieties are tightly contrôlés, in particular those whose denominated origin is that faraway land of which we know so little: France. I picked up a carton for him at La Cave au Tabac by the Gare du...

Triple R interview

Listen to Will Self talking on the Breakfasters show in Australia here at about the 2hr 10min mark.

The Conversation Hour

Listen to Will Self talking on Australian radio here (available for seven days), as part of the press before his appearance at the Melbourne writers festival. He talks about his latest novel, Shark, why he disagrees with his fellow guest Sarai Walker, author of Dietland, and much more besides.

Jeremy Clarkson’s denim false consciousness

‘Instead of checking their privilege, these .99-calibre twerps are more likely to check their wing mirror and overtake at speed, chortling all the while.’

During the Kosovo crisis in the late 1990s, the sight of Tony Blair’s snake hips, cinched by the waistband of his black Levi’s 501s and wiggling their way between displaced Kosovans, impacted on me in much the way the ordinance dropped by USAF bombers did Slobodan Milosevic. He was forced out of office: I dropped my trousers. Up until that...

Doughnut festival

Will Self is the patron of the Architecture Foundation’s Doughnut festival at the University of Greenwich on 5 September, “A day long exploration of London’s rapidly transforming periphery” with Hanif Kureishi.

Future Proofing: No End of Pleasure

Will Self is one of the contributors to the BBC Radio 4 programme Future Proofing, presented by the novelist AL Kennedy, which you can listen to here. This episode was first aired in October last year.

The aerotropolis of Heathrow

Each year at the start of the autumn term, I lead my students on a walk from Brunel University, about three miles from Heathrow as the jet flies, to the boundary of Europe’s busiest airport.

Our route passes through the rundown area of West Drayton, a desert with windows in which everything costs 99p. Though the airport is a leading regional employer, many of its skilled workers prefer to live in the Chilterns or along the river in Windsor or Henley. Former manufacturing districts such as Hay...

On location: mindful walking on Holy Isle

“From a distance we must, I think, resemble a particularly duff channel ident for BBC1 – this slow-revolving blur of sluggish human animals”

We are practising mindful walking on the shore of Holy Isle: a group of 30 or so, mostly in our fifties and sixties, we have formed a large and ragged circle. “Lift, raise, lower, touch,” our leader instructs us; and so we do, foot after foot planted on the sheep-shot-bedizened turf where the person in front has just lifted hers. From a distance we must,...

Vote Christian Wolmar for Labour’s candidate for London mayor

Read why at the New Statesman here.

On Montaigne

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Gzpmr5dAU

In a talk with Boyd Tonkin held at the Ciné Lumière (French Institute, London) in 2011, Will Self explained his approach to Montaigne.